Easter Island people want return of their sacred statue, stolen by imperial Brits

Posted on Thursday, 9th August 2018 @ 03:23 PM by adminText Size A | A | A

Moai sculpture from Easter Island in the British Museum by Veronika Lukasova on Global Look Press

The Rapa Nui people of Easter Island are asking the British Museum to return one of the island’s sacred Moai statues, stolen 150 years ago by British sailors. It’s one of the many artifacts looted by the UK in its imperial days.

British Royal Navy sailors took the 2.42-meter (almost 8ft) tall Moai figure from Easter Island in 1868 and presented it to Queen Victoria in 1869. She, in turn, gifted it to the British Museum. No Moai statue has ever been precisely dated, but they are estimated to be at least 400 years old. This one’s name, Hoa Hakananai’a, ironically has been translated as “lost or stolen friend,” among other variants.

Now representatives of the native Easter Island Rapa Nui tribe have penned a letter to the British Museum asking for its return. It has received the backing of the national treasuries minister of Chile, of which Eastern Island is a part.

Hoa Hakananai’a is just one of a myriad of historic artifacts held in the British Museum, whose dubious means of acquisition is causing calls for repatriation. So far, the British government has been reluctant to yield to those calls.

Some of the most notable of those treasures include the Koh-i-noor diamond, taken from India and also presented to Queen Victoria in the mid-19th century. Another is the Rosetta Stone, discovered by Napoleon’s French Army in the late-18th century, which ended up in Britain in the early 1800s. There are also the Elgin Marbles from Greece, named after the Earl of Elgin, who in 1801 procured them from the Ottoman Empire, then the rulers of Greece.

In all of these cases, the original countries’ governments want their treasures back. With the Elgin Marbles, even UNESCO has interjected with a proposal to mediate the dispute.UK authorities are resisting any calls to repatriate the artifacts. Their chief arguments being that the British Museum offers better conditions for their preservation and study.

Related News On HPUB:

The city is approaching a terrible milestone — nearly 10,000 people have suffered cancers linked to the toxic dust and smoke at Ground Zero, The Post has learned. With the 17th anniversary of the Sept….

Source: PBS An 11-year-old boy on Friday was able to hack into a replica of the Florida state election website and change voting results found there in under 10 minutes during the world’s largest yearly hacking…

‘Deeply Disturbing’: For Second Time This Year, Facebook Suspends Left-Leaning teleSUR English Without Explanation “It seems like the censorship power many people on the left want Silicon Valley executives to unilaterally exercise might end up…